General Playing Strategy by Al-T
=General Strategies= This is a general playing strategies guide and as such it does not focus primarily on specific items and skills but rather on an overview of how to get through the mod with any character. I have split the mod into 3 main parts: 1). Start game to Act5 normal. Early Game. 2). Act5 normal to Act5 Hell + Cows normal and possibly Cows NM. Mid Game. 3). Cows NM and Hell + Insanity Levels. Spoiler in favour of the demons....22,000,000 attack rating gives a 10% chance to hit Immortals, 7% chance to hit Tim The Enchanters, Chimeras and Mini-Diablos in Hell Insanity levels. End Game. General Items For All Characters 1). Minor and Major Charms of Making + Posters + CtC rings and amulets. 2). Major or Mega Charms of Making + Posters + ZyEl artifact(s) + runeword(s). 3). ZyEl artifacts + runeword(s) + megaload crafted items. General Strategies For All Characters 1). Early game: Untwinked - use anything you can until you complete a few Minor Charms of Making followed by a poster or 2 and CtC rings as mentioned in my beginners guide. Twinked - use the Charms of Making and posters you have and any CtC or nice unique rings and ammys. Twinked and Untwinked - Get something to freeze monsters before Act 3 and try to get "cannot be frozen" for yourself. For Act 4 and 5 normal get either some life and mana leech or life and mana regen. They don't have to be insanely high as I previously thought but you will need some, however, the higher you can get these the longer you will stay alive. Do not go near even the normal Insanity Levels (Suicide Sanctum, Wayside of Woe and Orifice to Oblivion) until you are at least level 300 and have a basic grip on how the mod plays. The reason for this is if you are too low a level, you will get the same or better levelling in other areas due to the mlvl vs clvl differences and you will die a lot more and a lot faster in the Insanity levels than you do in say "The Killing Grounds". By all means try the Killing Grounds...some nice levelling there before you are L300 but make sure you have crowd control skills. 2). Mid-Game: Twinked and Untwinked - get some life and mana leech and life and mana regen and start moving away from relying on posters and craft your own bespoke gear and make sure you have a ZyEl artifact or 2 (this will depend on the class you have). "Oath of char" runewords will also help a lot. 3). End-Game: Crafting is the only thing that can help you here, period. This is emphasised even more in version 4.4C over earlier versions due to the changes to monsters and the removal of a lot of 1 hit-kills which we had in 4.0 to 4.3. You already have the "Oath of char" runeword(s)...keep them for the life on level stats. Melee Tip For melee classes there is one tip that works in ZyEl very nicely and has held true ever since the early days of D2, namely, "Angelics". With 1 Angelic ring and 1 Angelic amulet a melee character doesn't need to worry too much about attack rating. Back To Guides